Mack Hansen: 'It's bullshit and it's starting to get really frustrating"
Dublin Bkt Rugby 21/12/2024 Aviva United Stadium, Championship,
A hugely frustrated Mack Hansen has expressed his anger at what he believes has been years of bad calls against Connacht after the province fell just short of Leinster in a gripping URC interpro at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday night.
The visitors lost 20-12 to their hosts having been 17-0 down early in the second-half, but there were suggestions that Connacht had been hard-done by at scrum time in the first period, and in a handful of other contentious decisions.
Shane Jennings was shown a yellow card after a blatant block on Luke McGrath after the Leinster nine had kicked through, but there was an interminable delay earlier when the TMO looked at endless angles of a fairly innocuous tackle by Josh Ioane on Gus McCarthy.
Hansen compared that searching probe with the absence of any real investigative work when Leinster’s Jordie Barrett clashed with Bundee Aki, while he also mentioned how Ioane had to be replaced just after the half-hour for a HIA and didn’t reappear.
The Ireland wing has never been one to hold his tongue and he has been a refreshing presence on the sporting and media landscape for it. And he was straight out with his frustrations after the game when he turned the talk to referee Chris Busby, his TMO and officiating in general.
His take is worth repeating in full.
“Can I say something real quick about the situation? Like, I feel like we get this every week. We never get any calls, ever. I’ve been feeling this for years now. Like, you can’t possibly tell me yourselves sitting there, like checking the Gus McCarthy one, how much? How much did they check that: 10, 11 times?
“Bundee gets a direct hit to the head, it’s quite obvious, no call, doesn’t care. It’s like we get that every time so you can hear the frustration in my voice cos it’s starting to get to the point where honestly, it’s bullshit and it’s starting to get really frustrating for us cos people will say we are an inconsistent team but, Jesus Christ, when you are getting some of the calls we’re getting like, of course, you are going to be.
“I’m not making excuses by any means but like, when you just get it week after week, I feel it's got to be spoken about because it’s just getting to the point where it’s starting to really piss us off because we just feel we’re getting played out of games and we never ever get any calls.
“He didn’t even look back at it and then Josh goes off with a direct hit to the head again and I was talking to the touchie and he goes, ‘oh, when you tackle you lead with the head’. That doesn’t make any sense, that’s a penalty regardless.
“He’s actually said he’s hit him in the head with his head but because he was bent over it was fine or something like that, when he’s smacked him in the back of the head with his head and no call at all, not even a look back.
“We get that every time. It just needs to be said. It’s really fucking starting to get to us a team."
Hansen wasn’t blind to Connacht’s own faults. He pointed to some silly penalties conceded and lapses in concentration – and it's true that they defended poorly for Leinster’s two tries in the first-half having held the line heroically up to that.
Their second-half comeback was equally admirable - they scored one of the best tries of the season in taking it to the very last minute - but Hansen’s claim that it felt like they were “reffed out of the game for the first 40 minutes” will make all the headlines.
“I feel like for the first bit we were getting pressured, it seemed, like 16 men out there instead of 15, to be honest with you.”
The only time Hansen tried to curb the conversation was when his head coach Pete Wilkins was asked for his take on his player’s comments. Wilkins, Hansen reasoned, would be more liable to face disciplinary issues if he said it how he saw it.
As it was, the Connacht boss gave a measured take on it all.
“We all appreciate Mack’s honesty. It’s a tough one regarding referees’ performances. More often than not you are talking about TMO performances, who you never really get to meet in person.
“If you feed back to the referees your dissatisfaction, they either agree with you on some of your feedback - which doesn’t make you feel any better because then you know that you were right - or they disagree with you, which doesn’t make you feel any better because you can’t believe that you are not seeing eye to eye on it.
“All we can control is that we keep feeding it back and after that we see how we go. For us, particularly in defeat we put our energy into what we can control and what we can do better and you just hope that everyone else involved in the game is doing similar.”